


The Miles Yet to Run

by logogram



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alligators are a recurring theme in my stories and this one is no different, Alternate Universe, Another recurring theme, Friends to Lovers, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Mutual Pining, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 20:02:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4638408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/logogram/pseuds/logogram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry and Louis meet in Italy when Louis rescues Harry from a thief. They decide to travel together and hijinks, pining, and eventual romance ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Miles Yet to Run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [13beats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/13beats/gifts).



> The prompt: A backpacking across Europe AU, where Louis is the guy who's been doing this for a while and Harry is fresh out of high school and ready to take on the world in his gap year. Harry gets into some kind of trouble (author's choice), Louis rescues him, hijinks ensue …
> 
> Thanks to C for the beta and to larrysunrays for the Britpick! Any further mistakes are all mine.

“Zayn, that kid is going to get mugged.”

Cracking open one eye, Zayn peers in the direction that Louis is pointing, then lets his eye fall shut again. This kid, with his brown curls and green eyes, is way too cute to get robbed, so Louis tries again, this time poking Zayn in the arm. “We should go tell him.” 

“Look, Lou, if he wants to leave his pack wide open and unattended so he can play with a puppy, that’s his business. How much time do we have before the train leaves?” The question is punctuated with a yawn and Zayn’s head drooping farther onto Louis’s shoulder. 

Louis’s just opened his mouth to answer when he hears a sharp, “Hey!” and sees Going-to-Get-Robbed struggling to his feet. The guy who’d snatched his camera from the open backpack is already ten feet away, and Just-Been-Robbed has tripped over the puppy. 

Louis sighs. It always comes down to him. He punches Zayn in the shoulder, calls, “Hey, watch my stuff,” and takes off after the thief, dodging old ladies and confused tourists. The guy’s almost to the end of the platform, and Louis will be damned if he lets him get out and has to talk his way back into the station, as he foolishly left his ticket to Rome with Zayn in his pack. He’s pretty sure his Italian isn’t good enough to manage getting back in, so he puts on an extra burst of speed and tackles the guy just as he’s leaving the gate. 

They crash to the ground, rolling around, and Louis latches on to the camera. He’s pulling his leg back to aim a kick when he feels the guy being lifted off him. He curls his body protectively around the camera, just in case the thief has an accomplice, but then he hears Zayn’s laugh and looks up. Standing in a circle around him are Zayn, Cute-and-Careless, a security guard, and a ticket taker, all of them with quizzical expressions and none of them, Louis notices, offering to help him up.

“Fine,” he grumbles, “don’t offer me a hand, it’s not like I’ve just rescued your expensive electronics from being stolen and sold on the black market.” At that, Cute-and-Careless startles and stretches out a hand toward Louis. Louis accepts (with great dignity, he thinks) and makes his way gingerly to his feet. 

He passes the camera over and, as he does, catches sight of the time on his watch. “Oh shit, Zayn, the train leaves in 5 minutes!” 

Zayn’s eyes widen and he shoves Louis’s pack at him, shouldering his own more firmly. “Make a run for it?” he asks, and Louis inclines his head toward Cute-and-Careless.

“Is this your train, too, Curly?” The boy, who’s zipping his camera into his pack and looks to be blinking back tears, nods. “Yeah, it is, I just… thank you so much. You didn’t have to chase him down and I-”

Louis cuts him off with a wave of the hand. “Love, if you spend all day apologising, we really will miss the train.”

The boy nods shakily and hitches up his pack.

“Well, then, are you coming?” Louis gestures toward the platform they’d left and turns so that they can dash off to the train on time. They make it to their seats just as the train doors close, and breathes a sigh of relief as he drops into his seat across from the camera guy.

******

Two hours into the ride, and Louis is fascinated by Harry, who he’s found out has taken much the same path as he has- finishing school, not having a clue what he wanted to study, setting out to travel- except that he’s done it alone, while Louis had Zayn. And, he’s learned, Harry has had shockingly bad luck while in Italy. In addition to having his camera stolen earlier today, last week he’d tripped down the stairs to Corniglia, spraining his ankle and necessitating a trip to the doctor, who’d strongly urged him to keep the foot elevated and to hold off on traveling, causing Harry to miss his earlier train back to Rome.

And the month before, he’d gotten kicked out of the Louvre sticking his foot under the railing around the Mona Lisa. “Honestly,” Harry says, “were the five guards really necessary?” He smiles sheepishly when Louis had ruffles his hair and tells him that he obviously has the look of a hardened art thief, so the guards were absolutely in the right.

“So, Harold,” Louis starts, and Harry shoots a bright smile at him, as though being called Harold is something he’s always wanted, “what’s the rest of your route like? After Cinque Terre, where to next?”

Harry reaches into his backpack, pulling out a bundle of maps, torn-out pages from guide books, and what look to be advertisement pages printed off the internet. “To be honest,” he says, “I’m not sure where I’m going next. I’m meant to meet my friends in Berlin when they finish with the autumn term, and show off everything that I’ve learned about backpacking.” He shrugs, looking quite a bit more miserable than he had a moment ago. “But look at everything that’s happened to me just in the past month- they’re expecting me to be an expert, and I’m more likely to lead us into a pit of alligators than on an adventure.”

It’s hard to hold back his laugh, but seeing Harry’s furrowed brow and downturned mouth, Louis does his best. “Come on now, Curly, don’t be sad. There’s hardly going to be a pit of alligators in Berlin. You’re much more likely to be chased by a pack of wild boars there. Happened to a friend of mine, she had to climb on top of a car to escape.” He’s not lessening Harry’s concerns, he knows, with his ramblings about wild boars on the streets of Berlin, but he can’t seem to stop talking. “Whole packs of them, just running wild through the streets. Three thousand, I think I heard…”

He trails off as Harry looks up at him. “Do boars even travel in packs? That does’t sound right.” He’s wide-eyed and Louis can’t help but joke with him.

“Does it matter? When they’re right behind you— pack, herd, it won’t really matter.” Harry’s eyes widen farther and Louis decides to take pity on him. He nudges Harry’s shoulder with his. He’s itching to run his hands through Harry’s curls, but who does that hours after meeting someone? Creeps, that’s who, he decides, and so he keeps his hands in his lap.

Anyway, back to Harry’s problem at hand, and this time he thinks that he might have a solution that will work for them both. “What if we traveled together until it’s time to meet your friends?”

Harry lights up with a smile again, but it dims quickly and he asks, with a nod in Zayn’s direction, “But wouldn’t I be in the way? I don’t want to ruin your trip, and I’ve already made you nearly miss a train. Don’t feel as though you have to keep on rescuing me.”

“But you wouldn’t ruin my trip at all!” Louis gives his best, most winning smile. “You know, Zayn’s actually leaving to go back to Bradford, spend some time with his family, get a real job, and I’m going to be on my own for like the first time in three years of traveling.” He aims puppy dog eyes at Harry. Would it be too much to pout, he wonders? He juts his lip forward a bit, and Harry’s face softens further. “You’d actually be doing me a favour, if you think about it. I’ve been kind of dreading being on my own after so long, if we’re being honest.”

At this, Zayn speaks up, and Louis hadn’t realised that he was awake. “He’s actually been really worried, Harry, he’s talked about it for months now. Once he pretended to be a ghost and tried to convince me that I’d be haunted forever if I went back to England. I still don’t know where he got the sheet.”  
Harry’s smiling openly now, relieved and looking less apprehensive than he did when Louis met him. “Are you really serious right now, Louis? Because that would be amazing, I’d love to have someone to show me the ropes.”

Zayn’s now propped himself up on his pack, and is watching their interaction, far too smirky and smug for Louis’s liking. When Louis assures Harry that he’s absolutely serious, and that to have Harry along for the journey would be a blast, Zayn actually cackles. Louis glares at him.

******

After an emotional goodbye at the airport— where Louis did not cry, no matter how Zayn teased him, he and Harry are left standing outside departures, still having never agreed on a next destination.

Harry runs his hand down Louis’s arm. Is that something Harry does to his friends, Louis wonders, or something more? Zayn had tried to convince him that Harry seemed interested in him as they’d sat outside a cafe overlooking one of Rome’s piazzas, but when they’d looked over, Harry was deep in conversation with a waitress, smiling and laughing. Louis suspects that Harry might not be interested in him at all, but may just be one of those people who gives their complete attention to everyone they meet. To be fair, he’d paid more attention to Louis than to Zayn, but Louis had been the one to rescue his camera, so maybe— He stops himself when he sees Harry looking at him expectantly, as though he’s asked a question and Louis has yet to give an answer.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” Ha! Nice recovery, he thinks, but Harry just rolls his eyes and gives a dimpled smile.

“I’d asked if you’d thought about where you want to go from here? We never got a chance to decide before Zayn left.”

Louis leads them to a bench before he lays out what, in his mind, is a master plan. He and Zayn had spent nearly two of their three years of travel in southeast Asia before flying into Rome, since Zayn had wanted to visit Italy before returning to England. Louis, however, had planned to head over to the Balkans, do some swimming, fishing, kayaking, and really get to know some of the small coastal towns. He thinks that, even with Harry’s need to get up to Berlin— but not for another four months— that this would still be a workable route.

He’s only done the first image search for “Adriatic,” before Harry is nodding fervently. “That looks amazing, Lou! And then, once we split up, I can work my way north through Austria and the Czech Republic.” He grins, apparently completely satisfied with this plan. “So how are we going to get there?”

“Well, young Harold, that’s the best part. You don’t get seasick, do you?”

Harry shakes his head, though he looks a bit hesitant. “I mean, I never have before, but then I’ve only ever been on a boat for a few hours at a time, on calm water, so I really don’t know for sure. I don’t get carsick, though.”

Well, that’s good enough for Louis. He passes over the brochure he’s been carrying around since he and Zayn had arrived in Italy over a month ago. Cheerful blue letters spell out “Italy—Greece,” “Greece—Italy,” and the name of the ferry company, above a picture of a ferry on the Adriatic Sea.

Harry takes it, and, nearly immediately, his dimples reappear. “This looks sick, Lou! How long does it take? How much is it?”

It turns out that the pamphlet is hopelessly outdated, but they’re able to make reservations online for the end of the following week easily enough, giving them plenty of time to explore southern Italy, possibly even Sicily, before arriving at the port in Bari.

******

Louis lays back on the lounge chair and huffs out a sigh. Harry’d wandered off fifteen minutes ago to the snack bar, where he’s currently laughing with the bartender. Louis had caught his eye once, trying to see if he wanted to go swim, but Harry had waved merrily and turned back to his conversation. Unfortunately, this has left Louis alone with the thoughts that he’d been trying to put out of his mind since they’d seen Zayn off at the airport.

The week leading up to the ferry ride was, Louis thinks, one of the most pleasant and painful weeks of his life. On the one hand, he and Harry travel perfectly together, always in sync about their preferred pace of travel, sights they want to see, and restaurants they’d like to try. On the other hand, Louis gets a dark, sick feeling in his stomach each time he sees Harry paying particular attention to one of their fellow tourists, or to a local they’ve met. Worse than that feeling, though, is the guilt that comes with it. Harry agreed to travel with Louis to get experience in backpacking, not to be pined over. No matter how touchy and demonstrative Harry has been, he’s still shown no real romantic interest in Louis, so he forces himself to push the thoughts to the back of his mind.

It’s just that they’ve arrived in Greece, and if Harry was dynamic before they’d left Italy, he’s electric now, and Louis’s having trouble keeping all of this emotion buried. As soon as they stepped off the ferry, Harry had started making a plan to head south for Kythera, so that he could “…rise out of the sea like Aphrodite, Lou!” And sap that he is, Louis’d straight away begun booking another ferry and a guesthouse as Harry buzzed excitedly about, and here they are, a few days later, on the island where Aphrodite was born, which is quite possibly the most romantic place Louis has ever seen. So it only makes sense that his brain is going haywire with this crush thing. He’ll just have to try harder to tamp it down, that’s all, and let Harry have the experience that he’s wanted to have while backpacking, without worrying about Louis.

Well, then. There’s no reason to lay here in this lounger with the sea glittering warm and blue in front of him. A few steps take him waist deep and he lays back, floating, letting the sun hit his face. It’s peaceful and serene, and just when he’s picturing drifting all day like this, the first splash comes.

Louis shrieks, spluttering, as the water hits his face and chest, and looks up to see Harry grinning at him, a dimple pressing into his cheek. It’s automatic, pulling back his arm and sweeping the water toward Harry, who flings himself sideways to avoid the spray, and goes under while trying to hit Louis with a splash off his foot. When Harry emerges, Louis watches his head turn from side to side as he scans the water in front of him, trying to see where Louis’s gone.

“Lou?” he calls, a tinge of uncertainty in his voice. Louis wills himself to keep still and quiet, crouched behind Harry in the water, willing him not to turn around yet. “Louis?” he calls again, this time with a touch of panic creeping in. Just as he starts to turn, Louis cups his hands below the water and jerks them up, sending a fountain of water cascading over Harry, who lets out a squawk and flings himself at Louis, wrapping around him like an octopus.

“I thought you were dead!” he mutters, his voice muffled from where his head is pressed into Louis’s neck. “I thought that you slipped under the water and I didn’t see you at all, and I thought that I killed you!” He pulls back and glares at Louis, all puffed up like an angry bird.

And Louis may wrap his arms around him more tightly, rubbing soothingly down his arms, but he can’t keep the laughter out of his voice when he says, “If you’re trying to kill me, you’re going to have to do a little better than one splash and then tripping into the sea, love.”

At that, Harry’s smile returns full force, fear of having caused Louis’s death apparently firmly behind him. And now, Louis is certain, is the time to ask. If ever Harry would feel obligated to say yes to something, it was now.

“Harry,” he begins, and Harry tilts his head, waiting him to continue. “H, wouldn’t it be amazing if we went cliff diving? Think of all the fun we could—”

“Think of all the deaths we could die, Lou!” Harry burst out. “I’ve already thought I killed you once today, we don’t need to try it again!”

He doesn’t look upset, though, and something in his posture tells Louis that he’s just moments away from agreeing, and so he wheedles a bit more. “You’d have a chance to use the camera that you insisted on lugging down here, H, and you wouldn’t even have to jump if you didn’t want to. Just sit on a rock and take pictures and then if I need to be rescued, you can jump in and save me.” That last line, he thinks, was a stroke of brilliance, as Harry’s defensive stance softens and his arms loosen slightly from their death-grip on Louis’s waist. Louis turns his face up to Harry’s and widens his eyes just a fraction of an inch.

“Oh, alright, we’ll do it, but just know that if you die, I’m holding you entirely responsible,” Harry asserts, and Louis lets out a shout before racing for the cliffs he’d been eyeing when they first arrived at the beach that morning. Harry shakes his head, as though he’s disgusted, but Louis can see the corners of his mouth turning up, as much as he’s trying to hide it.

Louis poses on top of cliff, taking his best Tom Daley stance before glancing over to make sure Harry’s watching. It’s much higher up, from his spot here, than it had seemed on the ground, but the man at the snack bar had assured him it was safe and he’d seen a couple of teenagers jump off that morning. Still, though, it’s bit unnerving. But Harry’s watching and Louis has to have been here, at the edge, for coming on five minutes, so he steels himself and leaps.

Time moves differently while he’s in the air, when he can’t get back to the safety of the cliff and it looks like the water’s speeding toward him. He hits it like a slap and hears Harry cheering for him as a distant whisper just before he goes under. Then it’s down, down with the force of the jump before he can force his legs to propel him back to the surface.

When he emerges, Harry’s at the edge of his own rock perch, waving wildly and grinning. “How was it?”

He stretches out his hand to help Louis up, but Louis waves him off. Now that his knees have stopped shaking and he’s breathing normally, he’s itching to jump again. Best to go back up now, before all this restless adrenaline wears off and he can’t bring himself to jump again.

It’s only after the fifth jump, when Louis is giddy from the sun and rush of the air and press of the water around him as he falls that he’s able to convince Harry to jump with him. At first, Harry refuses, but with each of Louis’s jumps, his protests are weaker and weaker, and Louis’s offer to hold his hand and jump with him seals the deal.

They count it down on the edge, Harry’s grip on Louis’s hand the only sign of his nerves, and at zero run to the edge together. As they’re falling, Harry lets out a squeak that could be Louis’s name, but then they hit the water and plunge down into the sea. Harry’s face is radiant when they emerge, and right away he’s babbling about jumping again, and could Louis take his picture when he jumps, because his mum will never believe that he actually did it.

They pass the afternoon this way, sometimes Harry jumping, sometimes Louis, often jumping together, and it’s only when the sun begins to fall in the sky and their stomachs rumble that they leave the cliffs in search of a shower and food.

******

That evening, after a meal at a fish tavern overlooking the beach, Harry transfers his photos from the day to his laptop, and then wanders outside to call his mom. Louis talked to his own family earlier, has texted back and forth with Zayn and some other friends from home off and on since they left the restaurant, and is way too riled up from earlier to sit and read. So while he knows it’s wrong, and that it’s an invasion of Harry’s privacy, he sneaks over to Harry’s laptop to look through his photos.

And he may have ruthlessly mocked Harry for insisting that he bring the camera all the way down to the beach, but he certainly isn’t laughing now. The photos are— reverent. There’s no other word for these images that capture Louis so perfectly, not just physically, but as a person. He could look at these ten, twenty, fifty years down the road and know exactly who he was at that moment, leaping off a cliff into the Aegean Sea.

He clicks back, back, back through the photos, marvelling at the landscapes and the pictures of the people who Harry’d stopped, bashfully, to ask if they’d mind being photographed. But the ones that he gets stuck on are the ones of Louis himself, some that he’d never known that Harry took. Photos of Louis laughing, his head thrown back and crinkles by his eyes, of Louis trying squid for the first time, his nose scrunched up and a look of revulsion on his face. Photos of Louis posed dramatically at the bow of the ferry they’d taken from Italy, and even a photo of Louis curled up, asleep, on the bus they’d had to take from one tiny Greek town to another.

Louis has been so sure that his feelings were one-sided, but looking at these pictures, it seems as though they’re anything but unrequited. He’ll have to say something to Harry, he can’t have just looked through his photos, have broken his trust like this without saying anything. He’s standing over the laptop, still open to the most recent picture of Louis, shaking himself dry after the final jump from the cliff, when Harry walks in the room and freezes.

“Lou?” his voice is beseeching, as though he knows that Louis’s seen the photos, but that he’d meant for them to be private. When Louis doesn’t answer immediately, he takes another step into the room, though his shoulders have hunched in on themselves a bit. His lip is between his teeth, and even worried, he looks stunning.

And now, Louis’s feet are moving, out of his control. He stops a few feet away from Harry and when he gets there, they both speak at the same time.

“I’ve liked you since the first day—”

“I was so grateful that man stole my camera—”

Harry reaches out and squeezes Louis’s hand, his face shining. Louis always wants to see him like this— tanned and glowing from within.

“Hey Lou?” Harry begins. “I hope you don’t mind, but I have a travel blog.”

Louis chuckles. “Why on earth would I mind if you had a blog?”

Then Harry’s turning the laptop toward him, minimising the photos, and he sees the titles of Harry’s blog entries running down the right side of the screen. “The Most Beautiful Man in the World Rescued My Camera, and Now We’re Traveling Through Europe Together,” “Once I Spent Twenty Hours on a Ferry to Greece,” and “Cliff Diving and Other Stupid Things I’ve Done.”

Harry looks sheepish when he admits, “I’ve had the blog all along, but once we started traveling together, the traffic went through the roof.”

“Harold!” Louis schools his expression into one of shock. “You’ve been shamelessly exploiting our budding relationship for profit? You better give me a cut of it.”

“Come on, Lou, I’ve been using all the ad revenue to pay for our dinners out. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

Louis shakes his head mockingly, but he finds he can’t hold back his smile. “And here I thought you were independently wealthy. This is appalling news, Harold. We’re just going to have to keep on traveling, keep up the cash flow with blog hits.”

Harry’s answering smile is luminous.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to write just hijinks, but Harry and Louis and their feelings got in the way, so I was left with a mix of the two. Also, I know that some accounts say Aphrodite was born from the sea in Cyprus, but I went with the ones that said it was Kythera because it worked with the story better. 
> 
> 13beats, I hope you enjoyed it! I was a pinch hitter, and so I didn’t have as much time to write the story as I’d have liked, but I’d love to continue writing about their travel adventures in the future, so this may turn into a series.


End file.
